The life of class: a case study in a sociological concept

This study in the use of a sociological concept is based in recent sociologies of knowledge. The empirical material is Pakulski and Waters’ (1996a) argument for ‘the death of class’. Three anomalies are identified in their claim: puzzles of ‘reflexion’ (referring to a precondition that sociology be self-exemplifying) of ‘repetition’ (denoting an isomorphism between Pakulski and Waters’ case and Bernstein's revisionism; and of ‘reception’ (referring to the tension between Marxism and sociology). Each of these points to a form of disciplinary circularity, which can be accommodated if the concept of class is reconceptualised as a rhetorical topic. When their argument is re-read on that basis, Pakulski and Waters are seen to have exemplified what they have denied: that sociology displays the life of class. © 2000, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.